It is well known that service men and women and sales persons who visit customer locations throughout a wide geographic territory are oftentimes delayed in meeting appointment times. These appointment times are set, in advance, to provide service, repair and goods to the customer at the customer's location or site or to engage the customer in conversations and demonstrations in an effort to sell goods or services to the customer or prospective customer. With the advent of GPS-enabled electronic devices (cellular telephones, smart phones, tablet computers and other devices having GPS-enabled circuitry), it is easier for the person assigned to the task (the service man or salesman) to locate the customer. However, a problem still exists if a number of customers are scheduled for a single day or if the task person must visit other stores or locations to collect additional service personnel or equipment or supplies (vendor locations) in order to complete the task at the customer's location.
Databases and spreadsheets (a spreadsheet being a two dimensional database) have been developed to provide customer service and improve customer relations through the use of computer programs and computer systems. Notwithstanding these tools, business have experienced difficulty in monitoring mobile work forces and sales forces which need to visit the customer site to close a sale or repair equipment or provide other services at the customer's location. The present system and method seeks to solve problems associated with a mobile workforce.
Many systems have been implemented for determining a geographic location and other parameters, of a device associated with persons, things, or apparatus at a given time. Conventional systems are typically designed to report those raw locations as such without further analysis most notably as to what the actual movement segments are (moving, idle, etc.).
Conventional systems are typically designed to report those raw location data without any indication as what are the actual movement segments of the GPS-tracked person or object and without depiction of the corresponding path and how that geo-data relates to the corresponding appointment locations. There is a need to visualize the type and path and location of each individual movement segments (as well as visualizing the corresponding appointment location if applicable).
There is a need for a reliable and automated method to identify the corresponding movement segments. There is a further need to visualize the time and the duration of the individual movement segments (as well as visualizing the corresponding appointments/schedule/calendar/work order/task id/customer/point of interest). Also, there is a need to map the movement, path and location of task persons and equipment